


Show Them How You Smile

by karkedup



Series: Four fanfic challenge [1]
Category: RWBY
Genre: 4+1 Things, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Loss, Loss of Parent(s), Manipulation, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27776077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karkedup/pseuds/karkedup
Summary: Four times someone believed in Ilia, and the one time she believed in herself.
Relationships: Ilia Amitola/Blake Belladonna (One-sided)
Series: Four fanfic challenge [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2031970
Kudos: 2





	Show Them How You Smile

**Author's Note:**

> Me and starting another WIP? More likely than you think :)  
> Title taken from "Smile" song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** Abuse towards faunus and hate speech, canon-typical violence

The air smelled crisp and cool, as she takes in a lungful of the unpolluted Atlas air. Ilia opens her eyes and blinks at the clear sky, smiling to herself.

Atlas city, a city of dreams and hope.

She turns to look at her parents and beams, “Mom, dad look at those big buildings! They’re really pretty.”

Her parents are weary looking but their eyes crinkle with gentle affection as they gaze at her. Her mother lovingly runs a hand through her hair and smiles, “Only the prettiest things for our princess.”

She smiles through teary eyes and hugs her, burying her face in her hair, feeling another pair of arms bracket them. She breathes in their familiar scent, letting the tears escape at the feeling of being loved, having the hope for a better future.

They pull away and her dad wipes her tears. Her parents share a look, having a silent conversation, then they turn to her. Her mother puts a fragile but firm hand on her shoulder. 

“Ilia there are some rules, which you have to follow.”

She tilts her head in curiosity, her mother continues, “Firstly, you can’t bring your friends home.”

She nods. She didn’t bring any friends home back in Mantle either.

“Secondly, you have to wear clothing that covers your arms and legs.”

She tilts her head but nods. Atlas is cold anyway.

“Thirdly, You…you can’t talk about us to anyone outside.”

This one is confusing, her eyes turn blue as she looks at her mom and then at her dad, “Why? You are my parents, how can’t I…”

Her parents share a look, and her dad cups her cheek and brushes her hair back, “We are faunus, honey. Atlesians don’t like faunus. They can’t know we’re one, and that we are miners for Schnee Dust Company. You’ll make friends better if you don’t tell and your life would be safer than ours.”

“Which comes to our last and the most important rule, which you can never ever break.”, her mom says and lightly taps at her cheek, her eyes change back to their silver pools, “What’s that?”, Ilia asks.

Her mom takes in a deep breath and her dad puts a hand on her shoulder and nods at her. She continues, “You can never change color , even your eyes. You must control your emotions, lest they influence the color of your skin. Under no circumstances can they get even have a clue that you’re a faunus. You have to blend in. You have to promise us that you won’t break the rules.”

She stares at them now, feeling very much confused as they never had the last two rules on Mantle. Everyone knew she was a faunus, and her friends liked her and they had frequent sleepovers at her home.

“Mom, I don’t understand.”

Her parents share a sad look, her dad’s eyes turning blue. Her mom brushes her hair affectionately and takes her hands in hers but she also looks so sad even if her eyes are her normal brown, “I know, dear. But promise me, even if you don’t get why we have to do this, you won’t break the rules. You will be much happier, and they wouldn’t hate you if you do.”

She doesn’t want them to look sad.

She has to follow the rules or her parents’ lives will be endangered and their entire life’s savings would be wasted.

“I promise. ”, she says vigorously nodding her head. She can blend in as a human, she loves blending in.

Her father’s eyes are still blue when he says, “We hope you never have to understand.”

*~~*

Blending in is so easy. It came naturally to Ilia, she laughed with the humans, played with them, it was all so different, but felt the same.

Then why did they treat the faunus differently?

“I heard a new kid is joining our class. Let’s hope they’re not faunus.”, Sara complains.

“Ewww those faunus are so dirty! I wouldn’t wanna study with one, let alone sit in the same room as them.”, the girl next to her- Ayushi- shudders in her seat.

Ilia is broken from her thoughts and glances at her just to see the pure disgust written on her face. Another girl- Kobra, --she remembers-- chimes in, “I know, right? Last night I saw one and that thing was just covered in dust, mud, and maybe even poop. Disgusting.”

Sara rolls her eyes, “Yeah they’re all pathetic low lives, who are all beneath us and they do the dirty work. Gee, I wish they didn’t even exist.”

She pokes Ilia's arm and when they all look at her, she realises they’re waiting for her to chime in.

_“They can’t know you’re a faunus. You have to blend in.”_

If they find out she’s a faunus, it will endanger her parents’ lives too.

She casts her eyes down on the desk and then looks at them, “I..agree with you. They do all the…dirty work so we don’t have to do it. They’re the worst.”

“Right?!”, Sara exclaims and they all nod in agreement.

As they talked more, and condemned the faunus, she felt more like the teenage girls she was friends with.

The new student is a faunus, she mocks them along with the girls.

At dinner, she never tells her parents about it. But they guess anyway.

Her mother smiles sadly and lovingly runs her fingers through her hair, “You’re brave and wise, Ilia. We believe in you to do the right thing.”

Her dad squeezes her hand, "One day will come, when you'll be free of the lies, dear one."

*~~*

They’re walking down the streets in the rain, talking and laughing.

“Your hair looks good today, I like your texture. Which shampoo did you use?”, Sara asks looking at Ilia’s hair.

“I used the-”, she stops at looks at the source of a yelp.

“Ew, get away you dog!”, Kobra yells and kicks a faunus with dog ears, who stumbles back and almost bumps into Ayushi, who hits him with her school bag and screams, “Don’t come closer!”

Ilia stands still, watching him crash into the fruit vendor, who grabs him by the collar and drags him off with an apology, “Sorry girls, he is acting like a rabid dog, needs to be put down.”

“I will fine you if that thing gave me rabies!”, Ayushi yells at the vendor.

"And see that we never see him again!", Sara follows.

“What happened?”, Ilia asks keeping her face carefully neutral.

“Stupid rabid dog was on the loose. I was walking and he just stood there wouldn’t move! So I kicked him.”, Kobra explains glaring in the direction the faunus went.

“You kicked him because he was in your way?”, she asks trying to sound curious, trying to stop the incredulity and anger from bleeding into her voice.

Ayushi nods and throws an arm around her shoulder, “She’s right. Should’ve tased him instead, would’ve taught him better.”

Ilia tries not to shove the arm off her.

Kobra rolls her eyes, “He tried to move as I got closer and I got scared he was gonna touch me, okay? So I didn’t think.”

“Fucking faunus, trying to get handsy.”, Sara mutters next to her and they resume their walk and the chatter.

She is still processing this all in rage and shock. She looks down to see her grey eyes turn into a sparkling shade of red in the puddle of water on the road. She closes her eyes and opens them.

They’re silver with a hint of red and no matter how hard she tries, the red won’t go away. She puts on a pair of sunglasses for the rest of the walk.

She skips dinner that night, ignoring the confused and sad looks her parents shoot her.

*~~*

Ilia understands what her parents meant too sooner.

It’s two months later in school during recess that she first hears about it.

“Did you know a bunch of animals died in a mining accident in Mantle, just an hour ago? Apparently, one of the animals tripped while handling an agitated dust crystal, it exploded and caused a chain reaction. ”, Sara exclaims scrolling through her scroll and Ilia freezes from head to toe and looks at her scroll and sees the news.

“All of them died?”, she chokes out.

Ayushi peeks into her own scroll, her voice is excited, “Hell yeah! There are no survivors!”

Kobra laughs and the other two girls snicker along with her, while Ilia’s world crashes.

Her parents are no more. Never to return.

And they’re rejoicing.

Laughing.

Sorrow and loss flood her, the carefully constructed dam hiding her emotions shatters along with the life her parents wanted her to live.

Her mom won’t hug her anymore. Her dad won’t be there to read to her. She won’t see their tired but warm smiles anymore. They’re dead.

She won’t ever get to see them again.

Her parents are gone forever. The humans killed them and now they’re laughing at their deaths.

Tears burst through her eyes, she bends over and cries with violent sobs shaking her entire body.

Suddenly, anger clouds her eyes and she doesn’t notice that the laughter has died down until a voice exclaims, “Her eyes are fucking blue and red!”

“That’s the first thing you see?! She’s blue all over!”

“What the fuck Ilia? You’ve lied to us, this whole time?! You’re one of those fucking faunus? A filthy liz-”, the voice cuts off with a strangled cough and there’s red dripping from her lips, Sara- Ilia realizes when the haze becomes a bit clear but she doesn’t care.

They’re all the same. They’re all humans.

She’s not one of them.

“How dare you--”, Ilia whirls around and punches Ayushi square in the face, a resounding crack echoing in the silence.

She turns to face Kobra who is staring at her with wide scared eyes.

Good.

She stalks to her with rage fuelled steps because she had the audacity to laugh at the death of her parents.

“My parents are dead. You spit on our mere existence, call us dirty freaks and animals. Rejoice when we die.”, she snarls and kicks Kobra’s stomach, who doubles over in pain and falls on her back while trying to get away from Ilia.

“In reality, you humans are selfish and full of murderers and vermin.”, she smiles at her darkly.

“Faunus! A faunus is attacking our students!”, A teacher yells behind them pointing at her, she turns to look at him and the security guards storming in with weapons.

A disc lands on her arm and it sends electric shock waves through her, she lets out a pained yelp and falls on her knees trying to get it off. She looks at her side and sees Kobra pointing a taser gun at her from where she’s lying on the ground. It takes a few shaky and pained tries, but she pries off the disc and kicks hard enough at Kobra’s face that she drops the taser. As the guards come close, she steps over her and grabs the gun, swiftly vaulting over the school’s boundary fence .

She closes her eyes briefly as she lands, the loss of her parents still fresh and the cut deeply tears her from the inside out. 

“Over there!”, a voice to her right yells and she looks at her hand, its blue.

She fires the taser in his direction, it hits him on the head and he drops on the ground, clutching his head and convulsing from the electricity, but there’s a stomp of footsteps coming from behind the fence, heading in her direction.

She jumps on a tree branch and shuffles higher up, hastily dodging the bullets pelting down on her.

“C’mon, c’mon.”, she wills herself to camouflage, her blue hand briefly changes to red, then back to blue as a fresh wave of sadness and despair threatens to consume her. A bullet wheezes past her hair, she shuts her eyes and focuses on clearing her head.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope y'all have an awesome week ahead <3 Say hi, or scream at me on [ my tumblr](https://avengingnatasharomanoff.tumblr.com)


End file.
